By Andrew Warshaw
April 11 – It’s less than 50 miles, a one-hour drive on a good day, between the respective grounds of Leicester City and Aston Villa in the English midlands. But the mood and atmosphere surrounding the two Premier League clubs could not be more extreme.
Whilst Leicester, playing a brand of old-fashioned but highly effective football that is more about organisation and concentration than edge-of-the-seat flair and creativity, have moved one step closer to the most unlikely miracle in the modern era – a first ever league title – Villa have created a vastly less palatable piece of history at the other end of the table.
Leicester’s style may not be for the purists, indeed some may describe it as functional, feeding off the mistakes of opponents. But if the rest of Europe are unfamiliar with Claudio Ranieri’s unfashionable but hugely spirited team, that will all change next season when Leicester, barring an 11th hour capitulation, enter the Champions league – almost certainly as defending English champions.
With only six games to go, it seems unthinkable that Leicester, with a seven-point cushion over second-placed Tottenham Hotspur, will fail to get over the line and complete the greatest English footballing fairytale since the Premier League was created in 1992.
This time last year, Leicester were rock bottom before winning seven of their last nine games to avoid relegation, a miracle in itself. But finishing ahead of all the big-spending usual suspects would eclipse even that.
Although Arsenal are mathematically still in the hunt, it’s the other team from north London who are realistically the only ones who can catch the Foxes. Tottenham themselves have had a remarkable season, having scored more goals and conceded fewer than any other team in the top flight. Only once before has the side with that record failed to win the title, a measure of how consistent and defensively resilient Leicester have been even if many of their results have been unspectacular 1-0 wins.
When, surely rather than if, Ranieri’s tream are crowned champions, that will only compound the misery at Midlands rivals Villa whose stadium is one of the most iconic in Europe, who have won the league title and FA Cup seven times in their history and who, of course, clinched the old European Cup back in 1982. But who are now on the brink of relegation for the first time in 29 years after the 23rd league defeat of a miserable campaign.
“Villa will be the biggest club to ever be relegated, in my mind,” said former chairman Doug Ellis. “It’s been my life for such a long time, nearly 32 years of them as chairman, and it’s breaking my heart to see.”
That sentiment would be echoed by the legions of Villa fans whose team have been a shambles on and off the pitch and been branded the worst Premier League side in history, with the likelihood of a long stay outside the top flight unless things change fast.
Much of the fans’ contempt has been directed at the cost-cutting policy of the club’s American owner whose appointment of Frenchman Remy Garde as manager in succession to Tim Sherwood was doomed from the start and lasted only four months. Andy Gray, the club’s former striker who was part of the last Villa team to go down, 1987, is blunt in his assessment of the latest demise of a highly respected name in the annals of English football.
“It’s the worst Aston Villa team I’ve ever seen. I hate to use these words but they’ve been clueless and abject,” Gray told the Daily Telegraph. “They are playing for a huge club but it’s been staggering to see them not even try a leg. If you’re going to go down, you do it fighting, but there’s been no evidence of that. The appointment of the next manager is now a massive decision for the new board and they need to take their time. If they don’t get it right they might spend more time in the lower leagues than they want to.”
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